


Five Times Lucky

by stellahibernis



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, F/M, Friends and Lovers, M/M, finding and losing and finding again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8737189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellahibernis/pseuds/stellahibernis
Summary: “Why can’t it be just you and me, Ma?” Steve asks one night as she is tucking him in.


  She smiles and ruffles his hair.


  “Because,” she says, “there’ll be a time when you’ll find someone who will become so important to you that they will always be a part of your heart. Maybe one person like that, maybe more. They won’t be the only people that you care about, there’ll be more of those because you have a big heart. They will be different in that you’ll always be connected to them.”


  “But are you sure?” Steve asks, still remembering how other people look at him. “What if there’s no one like that for me?”


  She’s completely serious when she looks at him, and he can’t help but believe. “I’m absolutely sure. You’ll meet them, and they will be the dearest people you’ll know. It might not always be easy, but you will always be glad to have them. Just keep an eye out and you’ll find them.”

***
Five people Steve is lucky to find in life. And one he's lucky to find again.





	

At five years old Steve isn’t very trusting when it comes to meeting new people. It’s not about shyness, since he isn’t like that at all. It’s just that he has already learned that none of them will look at him without either pity or scorn. If asked, he wouldn’t be able to articulate it; he has no words for it yet, but he knows that the way they look at him makes him uncomfortable. They look at him and he can tell they think he’s easy to bully or scare, or they think he can’t do anything, since he’s small and sickly.

The only person that doesn’t look at him like that is his mother, and she’s the only person that has always been there, for every day of his life. Maybe that is why she’s the only one to look at him kindly; she’s seen all of him so she knows exactly what he can do. Steve thinks it might be the only way to truly know someone. Granted, there are other people in the neighborhood that he doesn’t remember meeting for the first time who still look at him with pity, but they are not the ones that matter, they come and go.

“Why can’t it be just you and me, Ma?” he asks one night as she is tucking him in. 

He’d had a coughing fit out on the street that morning and Mrs Henderson, their new neighbor, had clicked her tongue and told his mother she must be tired of having to take care of him. Steve had gotten mad, which had only aggravated his cough. His mother had just told Mrs Henderson to have a good day, but Steve had recognized the tight lines on her face. She’d been angry too. 

Steve is still angry, and his chest still hurts a little which he tries to hide from his mother, and he doesn’t care to meet any new people ever again.

She smiles and ruffles his hair. 

“Because,” she says, “there’ll be a time when you’ll find someone who will become so important to you that they will always be a part of your heart. Maybe one person like that, maybe more. They won’t be the only people that you care about, there’ll be more of those because you have a big heart. They will be different in that you’ll always be connected to them.”

Steve feels a bit doubtful, if calmed. “But how will I recognize them?”

“You will. I can’t explain it, and it might not happen the moment you meet them, but you’ll know.”

“But are you sure?” Steve asks, still remembering how other people look at him. “What if there’s no one like that for me?”

She’s completely serious when she looks at him, and he can’t help but believe. “I’m absolutely sure. You’ll meet them, and they will be the dearest people you’ll know. It might not always be easy, but you will always be glad to have them. Just keep an eye out and you’ll find them.”

Steve burrows a little further under the blankets. “You’re the dearest person I know, Ma,” he says, maybe as a counterpoint, maybe as an affirmation. 

She smiles and kisses his forehead, and he sleeps that night peacefully all the way through.

 

* * *

 

**Bucky**

Steve doesn’t remember the discussion about the especially significant people he had with his mother when he first meets Bucky. He remembers it weeks later when the friendship between them is already fast and true, but not at the moment. Truth be told, at first he’s somewhat angry at Bucky for getting in between.

It’s a scrap between Steve and three other neighborhood boys, all of them bigger and older than him. It’s the usual sort of thing, it’s a hot summer day, all the adults are at work or otherwise busy, and the three boys are bored and start pushing smaller kids around. Steve just won’t back down or run away like most kids usually do. He stands his ground, things escalate and he’s bleeding on one knee when another boy dives into the fray without warning and pushes one of the bullies aside so viciously that all three back away. The boy throws a small rock, hard and accurate, at the ringleader, and they decide it’s too much of a trouble.

As they run away Steve ignores the offered hand and pushes himself up, and then inspects his knee. There’s dirt in the wound, which means it needs to be washed. He never likes that part. The other boy, one that Steve doesn’t remember seeing before, stands there looking at him, curious but not in the way that most people are that makes Steve feel twitchy. He should probably thank the boy, but that would sound like he needed help, which he didn’t. Really.

“Why’d you come in between?” he asks instead, and he doesn’t try to hide the edge of hostility in his voice.

“Three against one didn’t seem fair,” the boy shrugs. “I’m Bucky. We just moved here.” He gestures toward one of the nearby houses that’s generally in better condition than the one Steve and his mother live in.

Usually Steve would be angry at the implication that he can’t take care of himself, but there’s a casualness in Bucky’s tone that gives Steve the impression he would have done the same for anyone if it was three against one, and it mollifies him a bit.

“I’m Steve,” he decides to introduce himself.

At that Bucky sticks out his hand and they shake like adults do, weird and so formal that it makes them both crack up, and after that it’s easy to talk. They only separate when it’s time for dinner, promising to meet the next morning. It’s the first time something like that has happened to Steve, the first time anyone asks for his company.

Before dinner, when his mother tuts at him and cleans up his knee, Steve talks a mile a minute about Bucky, how he moved in from Indiana with his parents and little sister, how they both like baseball and stories. Usually his mother sighs about his injuries, but this time she smiles and asks questions about Bucky. They have stew with actual beef in it for dinner, so it’s a good day all around.

***

After that day Bucky and Steve are as inseparable as two little boys can be, and it continues to be so over the years. Bucky goes to school a year ahead of Steve, and Steve worries he’ll find new playmates and stops being friends with Steve who can’t play and roughhouse as much as others, but it never happens. Sometimes boys try to get Bucky to come with them, since Bucky is pretty great at all the games, and sometimes they even ask right in front of Steve, making it clear he’s not invited. It takes a long time for Steve to grow out of that moment of cold fear that happens every time Bucky’s asked and he is not, the fear that it’s finally the time that Bucky realizes he wants some new friends.

Later, when they’re in their teens, that cold fear comes when Bucky talks with girls, and seems interested in them. Steve tries to tell himself it’s different, it won’t mean they won’t be friends even if Bucky gets a girlfriend. Granted, some of them look at Steve down their noses, some even suggest Bucky shouldn’t spend time with him. The ones that get along with Steve, enough to be civil at him anyway, usually stay in Bucky’s favor for the longest, and Steve can’t quite figure out why he seems to resent them more than those who look at him with scorn.

The resentment lessens over the years as Steve starts to figure out what kind of a life they might have. At fifteen, he’s given up hope that there will be a miraculous cure for him, he’s resigned to the fact that he will not get better with time and that he will always be short and sickly. He figures it most likely means he will never be married. Bucky on the other hand probably will, and all Steve can hope for is to be allowed to spend time with his family. He wants Bucky to be happy.

***

When his mother said that with the special people things would be both easy and hard, she was right, more so than Steve will understand for a very long time. He sees fairly soon it manifesting, in both the happiness and dread that come with his friendship with Bucky, but he won’t understand the possible scale until it’s been decades and he’s living in a very different world.

For all his life, even at the darkest of times, being with Bucky is easy. Ever since childhood, Steve is comfortable spending time with Bucky in a way he isn’t with anyone else. He never feels like he’s falling behind, even when he realistically is. It’s easy to let Bucky coax him to breathe during the asthma attacks or to feel better when bedridden if Bucky is there spending time with him. Steve knows it won’t mean that Bucky will treat him like he can’t do anything once he’s up on his feet again. It’s easy to let Bucky help him, and it continues to be easy until their adulthood. 

It’s easy, but with that comes the guilt too. By the time they’re adults and living together Steve has thought dozens, if not hundreds of times that Bucky is doing too much for him. He’s working hard to get money for heat and medicine. He’s spending time with Steve when he could be going out, having fun and meeting people who won’t slow him down.

Steve thinks about it often, but he never says anything to Bucky, never tries to get him to do something else, something for himself instead of for Steve. Steve knows it’s because he’s afraid that Bucky might take him up for it, might realize he’s sticking around for some misplaced duty. He knows it makes him selfish, but he keeps quiet, keeps accepting everything Bucky gives him. He keeps looking at Bucky, trying to find a sign of fatigue or malcontent, and never does. 

When they’re young there’s the easy companionship, living in each others pockets, sleeping on the couch cushions on the floor, leaning on each other. It stays much the same as they grow, the affectionate closeness, roughhousing and arms thrown around shoulders. Thighs pressed together while sitting on the fire escape, even in the suffocating July heat.

It’s easy, and it’s complicated, growing up and seeing Bucky shoot taller and lose the wiry boyish frame. Skin and bone is complemented with new muscles, and sometimes Steve can’t tear his eyes away from Bucky’s shoulders, can’t stop marveling at the new width of them. It makes him uneasy in a way he has never felt, and he thinks it jealousy, not for Bucky looking like he does, because he deserves it all, but that Steve doesn’t; he’s skinny as always, bones poking at every joint. 

Only if it is jealousy, he doesn’t know how to explain the heat that flares inside him every time they touch. Sometimes he tries to keep a bit of a distance, stiffens when Bucky hauls him close, doesn’t lean in when he otherwise would, but it never lasts. He always finds himself melting against Bucky, one way or another, because there’s nothing that feels quite like it.

In the war the easy and hard aspects of them become somehow more pronounced, sharper. They work well together, of course they do, since they know how the other one thinks; even though Bucky is more quiet and brooding than Steve has ever seen him, and even though Steve sometimes feels like his entire brain has been rewired. They still move in time, perfectly in sync, even after their relative dimensions have changed and every battle is about life and death. 

There’s nothing quite as satisfying as having Bucky at his back, the presence warm even in the middle of the coldest winter. 

***

It’s the easiest thing in the world, loving Bucky. That’s something that never wavers in Steve’s heart, not with the guilt or fear or hardship. It’s the thread that runs through all of the years, tangling the two of them together. It’s easy as breathing, some might say, but then, Steve has plenty of experience of breathing not being easy at all.

Hanging at the side of a speeding train, after losing sight of Bucky in the most permanent way he can imagine, Steve finds it hard to breathe again, something that hasn’t happened since he emerged from the pod in that secret base in Brooklyn. The air doesn’t seem to want to come in, as if there’s something lodged in his throat, and it stays there until he goes down in the plane.

Loving Bucky is easy, and losing him is the kind of pain that rips Steve apart, in a way he never imagined possible. He sits alone in the bombed out bar, letting the hurt overwhelm him, and yet, if asked, he wouldn’t hesitate a second to say that if the pain is the price to pay for having had Bucky in his life, he wouldn’t want to be rid of it.

The pain accompanies him down into the ice, and it feels like relief, like coming home.

The pain is still there when he wakes up in a room that is altogether wrong.

 

* * *

 

**Peggy**

Steve isn’t sure if he believes in love at first sight, but when he first sees Peggy Carter, it’s certainly something at first sight. There’s definitely respect and intrigue, but it’s more than that. Maybe it is love, the first blush of it, the moment everything changes.

Steve doesn’t expect much, though, on that first day. Over the years he’s learned it’s pretty much futile to hope for any attention from women. Sometimes Bucky managed to find dates for both of them, even though Steve very soon had started to hope he wouldn’t, because invariably the girls that ended up with him were disappointed, and it wasn’t much fun at all for him. Still, he always was bad at saying no to Bucky. 

So he doesn’t expect much, and that’s why he doesn’t really notice it first. He doesn’t notice that she looks at him not with scorn or pity but curiosity. Something he does notice is that she treats him just the same as she does all the other recruits, which no one else does. They look at him, assume things and let it guide their actions. She doesn’t, and it’s exactly what Steve wants, but he doesn’t think there’s anything more to it than her being a good person.

It’s when he’s sitting at the back of the Jeep, still clutching the flag in his hands, almost shaking with the risk he took disobeying orders, that it finally hits him how different she is from almost everyone else he’s ever met. She looks at him, and it feels like she sees him, not just everything she assumes of him.

They chat a bit on the way back, and Steve still doesn’t know how to talk to women, but somehow being with her is easy, comfortable. It’s the same a few days later when they’re in the car on the way to Brooklyn for the procedure that’s meant to change everything about Steve. He finds himself opening up to her, almost without meaning to. He’s learned a long time ago that it can hurt to let people see his inner workings, and so he’s kept the group he’s let truly see him small. It’s not difficult at all to let her in.

***

There are a lot of things about Peggy that Steve admires, and her dedication to the cause is definitely one of them. So is her temper; Steve secretly delights in how it sometimes flares from under her perfect composure, showing how brightly the fire inside her burns. Granted, sometimes Steve himself gets singed by that fire, but he thinks it’s completely worth it. Maybe that’s what makes him fall a little bit in love with her, the time he first sees her punch Hodge.

He sees her temper and dedication, and it gives him a scare more than once, for the first time when she too sees the grenade and moves toward it instead of away, with the same instinct that makes Steve throw himself on it. Or the time she stands unflinching in front of a speeding car, not caring whether she gets run over if she manages to take down the man who killed Dr. Erskine. There are other instances during the war, and Steve has nightmares for weeks after she gets shot on the shoulder. She brushes it off like it’s nothing, gritting her teeth against the pain and cursing the air blue while she gets the field dressing. Steve is relieved and in love and he wonders how he got so lucky.

It’s easy with her, for all that Steve still gets tongue tied when it’s personal and not about the missions. They laugh, and they argue, but at least she only shoots at him that one time. He thinks he rather deserved it too. And it’s difficult for all the same reasons it’s easy, as backward as it sounds.

It’s difficult too because of where they are, where the whole world is. Everything is about fear and fighting, and it means their lives are on hold, waiting for better days. There is a longing that settles in Steve’s heart, and there are days when it’s hard to bear, when he finds himself regularly glancing at her photo inside his compass and feeling like the wait is all too long. 

It’s worth it, though, the waiting. He knows it, knows she is worth everything, and somehow he got lucky enough that she has promised to wait for him and with him. So they keep dancing around each other, working to bring an end to the war, both for themselves and for the world.

They wait, and wait, and in the end there is a kiss, fast and adrenaline fueled and perfect. 

There is a promise that never gets fulfilled, a meeting that never happens, because the arctic ice isn’t keen on giving up what it has in its clutches.

***

After he wakes up, after it’s been almost seventy years that feel like a blink, it takes Steve a while to get in touch with Peggy. Not due to not knowing where she is, because as soon as he asks, he is provided with a file, with more information than he would have known how to ask for and yet not enough.

There are stats; dates and career details and family. There’s an account on how she’d been integral in the founding of SHIELD and had served as the director for decades. There are missions, injuries, triumphs and accolades, all of them speaking of a long and successful career. 

There is a name of a husband, the date of marriage, the date of his death. There’s a summary of his career, SSR and then SHIELD, same as Peggy. Record of an injury at Bastogne. Steve remembers fighting through the siege, in the cold and bullets flying all around them, the Commandos flanking him, Bucky at his side.

There are names of Peggy’s children and grandchildren, listed with dates of birth. It’s a whole life lived after he was gone.

There are all the details, and there are no answers to the questions in Steve’s mind. Did she miss him and mourn him, and for how long? Is she happy and satisfied with what she ended up with? Steve hopes from the bottom of his heart that she is. The answer to the questions would be only a phone call away, but he can’t make himself dial the number.

It’s only after the attack in New York, when his world is turned even more upside down than he believed it could be, that he heads out of the city and drives to DC. It’s not hard finding where she lives, in a modern apartment building with cameras and a doorman. It’s only then that Steve realizes that maybe he should have called ahead, but he’s already there, so he might as well try and go in. The man at the door looks like he’s about to deny him entrance when he asks for Peggy, but then he double takes, stares at Steve hard for ten solid seconds before breaking into a grin and opening the door. He waves Steve through to the elevator and directs him to the top floor.

At Peggy’s door Steve almost turns around again, thinking he should have brought something, and what is he even going to say, but it feels like cowardice now that he’s already here, and that has never sat well with him. He rings the doorbell and waits, trying to not fidget.

Peggy opens the door herself and she’s different and the same. Still the most beautiful woman Steve has ever seen, and age hasn’t taken anything from it. Her eyes are bright and wise as ever, and Steve can tell the years haven’t extinguished the fire inside her.

At first neither one of them knows what to say, they just stand there, on different sides of the threshold and stare at each other. Finally Peggy reaches for him and Steve steps forward, folding her into an embrace, and it feels like finally coming home, the way Brooklyn hadn’t felt like at all.

There are tears, and apologies, but there are also smiles and laughter, and Steve finds the answers to his questions. Yes, Peggy missed him, and yes, she found a way to be happy. She says that now she’s all the happier that he’s come back.

***

In a way, she becomes his rock in the future. For all that she has lived more than three times longer than he has, and gone through years and years after the war, she still knows him like no one in the future does, like none of them can. She knew him before the serum, and she knows what it did and what was there before it. She is the lone tether Steve has to his past, real and tangible. He doesn’t know whether he’d be able to go on if all he had were memories.

They, and everything between them, are different from where they left off due to necessity and years, but Steve finds it surprisingly easy to find out how to fit together with her again. She’s still quick-witted and funny, sarcastic and wise, and he loves her maybe more than he ever did.

Still, she’s old, and with old age come the stumbles. There are problems with memory, occasional at first, then more and more common. There’s the diminishing strength that means she’s not able to live by herself anymore. She moves into a care home, much less like an institution or hospital than Steve imagined. There are big windows, her collection of photographs, comfortable chairs and friendly nurses. It’s as good as it probably can be, and it’s also an undeniable sign that time is running out. She’s moving away and Steve will be left to march through the decades without any connections to his past.

He visits her regularly, and sometimes it’s like no time has passed, sometimes it rends his heart to see her struggle with her memory or to lift a glass to her lips. It’s not easy, but he’s grateful for every day, every hour he gets to spend with her. She’s the one he tells all about his secret struggles, and later about the even more secret hopes. She smiles and tells him to live his life the best he can. She tells him to try and be happy.

Steve loves Peggy, has loved her from the first day they met and loves her until her last day on Earth and beyond that, and he knows he’s infinitely richer to have had her in his life.

 

* * *

 

**Nat**

Out of everyone who’s truly close to him, his relationship with Natasha is probably the most complicated one. It’s difficult too; sometimes it feels it’s maybe even odds whether any given interaction ends up being tricky, but Steve’s always sure it’s worth it.

He likes her from the start, meeting her on the deck of the helicarrier, when she looks at him and seems to see more than the facade of Captain America that everyone else so far in the future, with the exception of Nick Fury, has been looking at. It’s only been a few weeks, but Steve sometimes feels like he’s disappearing, because everyone sees what they want to see, the figure from the history books, and not him, not the man who’s lost in a whole another way than they expect.

They’ve been talking to him about the history, about the new technology and inventions, about how time has passed, how the country has evolved. They’re all the sort of things he cares about, or would, if he wasn’t still shocked by the loss; seeing Bucky fall, hearing the despair in Peggy’s voice. The people here in the future don’t seem to realize how much it hurts, they don’t realize that what to them is history is still an immediate pain for him.

Natasha from the first moment doesn’t do that. She looks at him, and Steve can tell she wants to know him, and not just interact with something she’s constructed in her mind. It instantly makes him drawn toward her. Later, when he knows her better, he thinks it’s a bit funny, considering the reason why she looked at him was that she doesn’t really trust other people’s assessments about anyone or anything, no more than she absolutely has to. She wants to make up her own mind. That’s exactly what Steve has always wanted from people, he’s wanted them to look at him and see him, so it doesn’t surprise him that he himself wants to trust her even when it’s clear he needs to be cautious about it.

He learns soon enough that she’s complicated, and not in any way he’s ever seen. There are layers under layers, and it’s tricky to see her motivations. Still, when push comes to shove, only hours after they’ve met, he decides to trust her. It’s part calculated, part instinct that tells him that when it comes to taking out the aliens, he can rely on her. Hence he trusts her judgment on Barton, and he trusts her to find a way to close the portal. He’s not disappointed.

***

Thankfully fighting aliens isn’t so common that one can make a career solely out of it. Steve takes a break, takes his bike on a tour, and gets a bit more settled in. He gets about five weeks before the itch of being idle becomes too much. Fury has offered him a job at SHIELD, but it takes Steve a while to decide what to do. There are the HYDRA guns and masks to consider, the ones that he can’t think about without seeing the man on the train, without a cold feeling in his gut. There’s the uncertainty of what else SHIELD might be hiding, and whether they truly are an organization Steve wants to align with.

He talks to Fury, he talks to Clint, he talks to Peggy, and keeps hesitating about his decision. Finally he talks to Natasha about it, not really asking for advice, it just comes up. She’s maybe the straightest with him, because she doesn’t dress it up in an ideal. She admits SHIELD isn’t perfect, and she also says that while they do good things, they also often do necessary things that might not be simply good. 

“If you believe SHIELD is something we need, then if you work for them, you also have a chance to change it from the inside, and voicing it when you think something isn’t right,” she tells him. “Mind you, even if you work for SHIELD, you’re not going to know everything SHIELD does.”

Steve thinks on it for a while more, and what she said is one of the deciding factors. Another one is that Peggy was one of the founders, and that she still believes SHIELD can make difference for the good. He already knows she did her best to guard his legacy, and now it’s his turn to try and do the same, even if her legacy is so much larger than his.

There are only semi-regular teams at SHIELD, and Steve learns to work with a lot of different people. In the early days they have a few missions together with Natasha, and Steve finds himself becoming more and more comfortable with her. There are some false starts, but they do manage to grow an easy rapport that follows them away from the field too. 

She appears at his apartment, still new and sparsely furnished, bringing a cake. They have it with coffee, and she tells him about their coworkers and the home renovation show she likes to watch. Steve feels like she sees through everything about his life, understands a lot more about him than he does about her, but somehow he doesn’t mind. 

He’s not sure if he’d call them friends for real. They work well together, so well that it would be difficult if she wasn’t so different from Bucky and Peggy, the only two people that have fit together with Steve as well as Nat does. Yet, there’s a distance between them too, lines that Steve feels he can’t really see, things hiding under surface. He doesn’t get the impression that they are anything sinister or something that would mean him harm. She just hides a part of herself because she hides everything that she absolutely doesn’t have to show. Her trust is hard earned and even then she only gives a little part of it.

Steve knows people often underestimate her, have it hard to believe that so much strength and resolve hide in her small frame. He knows better, knows how easy it is to dismiss people, and he tries not to. Hence he doesn’t find it hard at all to believe in her strength, but it’s her show of vulnerability that catches him off guard.

His world feels like it’s tilting when Fury gets shot in his apartment, with the encounter of an assassin that should be impossible, except the world seems to be full of impossible things these days. And his world tilts even more when Nat is thrown by it all, in a way he doesn’t understand.

Yet, in the mad dash to try and find answers about what’s going on at SHIELD, he also finds some answers about her, first about why it seems that all her surfaces are reflective, and then, later, about how completely her world shattered with the revelation of HYDRA.

It is then that Steve truly sees it, truly understands that what she wants is to do the right thing, but that she always doesn’t trust herself to know what it is. He’s noticed, that despite her bending rules and having flexible morals, when it really matters she comes through, she does the best thing regardless of the cost.

It’s why he offers her the only thing he can, his own trust and friendship. Because if she can’t always believe in herself, maybe it will help when someone else does. And again, he doesn’t have to regret. She comes through by saving his and Sam’s lives, and she comes through with burning down the SHIELD by revealing the files even when the cost to her personally is larger than to any of them.

***

Even after the breakthrough it’s not simple between them, it doesn’t mean he suddenly can see all of her, but it becomes easier and easier to honor the promise to trust her. And she is his true friend, all through the next years when they chase after HYDRA and try to make the Avengers a functioning unit. They are the ones that stay when some leave and others come in, one united front until they make a different choice when it comes to the Accords. 

Steve always knew that a day would come when they’d end up on different sides of some fence, and now that it’s happened he even understands her reasoning, trying to keep them all together. It’s just not something he agrees with, for him the cost is too high. They make a different choice, but it doesn’t mean they are any less important to each other.

Still, the one thing he can’t even consider, even when she asks him to, is to leave Bucky on his own. Before that the difference in stance had been just that, a difference in opinion, but now he has to choose one friend over another, and there’s really no question how it’ll go. 

It also doesn’t surprise him to find that she’s the last one he has to pass at the airport, and it’s a new flame of hope when she chooses then to help them. Steve knows it doesn’t necessarily mean they are again fully in alignment, it simply is her choice at that particular moment. But right then he believes things can be repaired, afterward.

And that is what they are, tied by bonds more secure than politics and disagreement. Steve knows he and Nat will be fine, will again find a common ground in the sea on uncertainty.

 

* * *

 

**Sam**

Steve has met a lot of soldiers after getting thawed out, and it’s always a weird experience. Even with those who don’t say anything, there’s a hint of hero worship that always feels just wrong. He’s never really treated as one of them, as someone with comparable experiences, even if he is. It seems to him that they think his war was different somehow, cleaner, the way it’s portrayed in the comics. No one seems to even consider he has the same nightmares that most of them do, even worse probably, considering he had several encounters with human experimentation, and regrets enough to buckle his knees.

When he meets Sam it’s very different from any other encounter. It starts in an informal environment, just running, and he’s calling out warnings out of politeness when he’s passing people, since he’s had a few close shaves before. Sam though, he gets irritated, and Steve nearly laughs at the last time around, so when he sees Sam resting against a tree he has to go and see what kind of a person he is.

The Air Force sweatshirt reveals him as a fellow soldier, but the context is new. At first Steve still thinks it’s going to be the same as ever, with the question about getting used to the future. Then comes the observation about how he can’t sleep that catches Steve’s attention. It’s then that he realizes that Sam sees him, the man he is in addition to his role, and it’s what makes him seek out Sam after the mission.

It surprises Steve how easy it is to open up to Sam, and he ends up voicing the doubts about his life he hasn’t talked about with anyone but Peggy. There is no judgment; Sam doesn’t try to tell him what he should do, just talks about other options, and Steve truly starts thinking of what he might do if he got out. He takes a long way round on his bike before going home, considering what Peggy said about starting over and what Sam said about having options.

He thinks of how it’s only now really occurred to him that he isn’t actually happy. It’s something he’s been pushing to the background, hasn’t wanted to deal with, but now it’s on the surface, impossible to ignore. He vaguely thinks he might try and do something about it, to rethink what he wants out of his life here in the future. It lasts until he finds Nick Fury in his apartment, and all hell breaks loose.

***

Steve has always relied on his instinct about people, about who to trust and who not, and it has mostly served him well. Hence it’s not a difficult choice to seek help from Sam when he and Nat can’t trust anyone at SHIELD, and can’t go to anyone they’re known to be friends with. The only hesitation he has is that their presence will put Sam in danger, but he follows his instinct there too, believing that Sam will be able to handle it, in every way necessary.

He finds an ally in Sam, one that becomes close in a way he’d almost forgotten is possible. They get through the hell of next few days, and after that Sam decides to stick with Steve, to go with him on the search for Bucky even if he clearly thinks it might be a wild goose chase, probably thinks it would be better if it turned out to be one. Sam also clearly understands that sometimes there are things one must do, regardless of whether it’s smart, and that’s the kind of support Steve needs right then.

In the following months Steve can’t help but feel guilty for uprooting Sam’s life for a search that feels as futile as it would be if they were looking for a literal ghost. There are almost no leads on where Bucky might have gone, and the only thing giving Steve hope is the fact that no body with a metal arm has turned up either. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s something.

He knows he’s fraying on the edges, as much as he pushes through, same as he always has, but the truth is that if he had to do it alone he’d be sinking fast. Later, when his life gets even more complicated and in addition to looking for Bucky they go after HYDRA with the Avengers, trying to figure out how they can operate as an independent unit, Steve is grateful for Sam’s steady presence.

***

The friendship that grows between them is firm, and simpler than perhaps any other Steve has had in his life. With Sam he knows exactly where he stands, what they are and what they’re not. It’s stable in a way even his friendship with Bucky never was. Both are strong and lasting, but with Bucky there always was an uncertainty, an undercurrent that neither one of them wanted to touch. With Sam everything is on the surface, and Steve thanks his stars time and again that he’s found someone like Sam here in the future, where with most things he feels like he doesn’t see all the angles.

With Sam it’s easy to talk and be silent, to relax over a meal or talk strategy for another Avengers missions. They laugh together and agree on things, or they disagree and even argue, but even then it’s all there, simple. The air is always clear. 

A lot of people might think Steve is too trusting, but he doesn’t think he is. He considers who and how much to trust, and he knows that sometimes trust is the fact that makes people be trustworthy. Here in the future the group of people he trusts is a smallish one, and out of everyone, Sam is the one he finds the easiest to rely on, and not just mission, but with everything.

When it comes to Peggy’s funeral, Sam just says he’s coming with Steve and that’s that. Steve is lost and conflicted, but it helps. The situation in general is fraught, with the Accords tearing their team apart, but at least Steve never has to question whether they’ll agree on them with Sam. The two of them are an united front, and when they go after Bucky Steve wouldn’t have anyone else on his side, regardless of what the outcome with Bucky is.

It’s the worst uncertainty in his life, truly not knowing the man Bucky has become, not knowing if he’s capable of what he’s accused of. Steve knows he’s capable, on pure skill level, and all he can do is hope that Bucky’s decided not to use those skills like that, but their action can only be decided after they find Bucky. When the time comes, Sam will make the right choice, and he will help Steve come to the right choice as well. Steve well knows, however much it turns his stomach, that this time he might not have the chance for the kind of gambit he used on the helicarrier. This time he might not win anything by laying down his shield.

***

All through the flight to Siberia and after the battle there when they head to Wakanda there is a cold fear in Steve’s gut, the knowledge that his friends have paid a price. They all have, but the ones that stayed behind in Leipzig took a different risk, and the unknown is what tears at Steve. When he finds out about the Raft and how his team mates are treated, he’s livid, but also determined. He’s sworn to himself that he’d make it okay, and he will. 

He has a little help with getting into the Raft, and seeing his friends in cells is hard enough, but coming up to Sam he gets a smile, as if Sam never doubted he’d come through. In his head Steve swears again he always will, because Sam has been such a true friend, and deserves nothing less.

As they head out, Steve knows that there’ll be hard days to come, but that Sam will be at his side through them all.

 

* * *

 

**Wanda**

Ever since he got the the serum, Steve has seen and experienced so many things that should have been impossible that he has become almost blasé about them. By the time SHIELD has gone down and it has turned out that Bucky is alive, Steve thinks that there’s nothing that can jolt him anymore.

Yet, in the HYDRA fortress up in the mountains of Sokovia, he does feel unsettled when he crosses paths with Wanda for the first time. The blood red gleaming haze about her when she throws him down the stairs is like nothing he’s experienced. Even the light of the Tesseract doesn’t compare, because this is foreign like it and yet at the same time human, containing a storm of power.

Steve is creating plans against her, and against the other person Clint saw, since they’re likely to turn up later. They’re classified as enemies in his head, up until Maria brings in the intel about them, their names and whatever else she could find about their background. Then all Steve can see is two people, barely more than kids, that have made the choices they’ve felt like they had to. They may be bad choices, but Steve wants to believe it’s not too late for them yet.

Turns out it isn’t either, although first the Avengers get another dose of her powers, scarier than the raw strength. It’s just a moment, a flash of red in his eyes, and Steve is back in the past. Everything is familiar, the music, the colors, the way people dress and talk, even the smells. In there, he knows the war is won, and that he’s made it back. Peggy is there, perfect and beautiful as always, and he never did get that dance with her. It would be so easy to let himself be immersed in it, to forget everything else, and yet the scariest thing is, that it’s no longer what he wants. He wouldn’t go back, knowing what he does of the future and what happened while he was under.

When Wanda and Pietro decide to fight with them and for them, they prove themselves to be effective, but they end up paying a price for it. After the battle is over Wanda is put down on the deck of the helicarrier by Vision, and as she kneels next to Pietro, quiet and withdrawn, her eyes dry, Steve feels his heart ache, because he too knows what it’s like to lose everything.

***

When things calm down a little and they start figuring out how to continue as Avengers, there’s really no question on whether Wanda’s going to be one of them. Steve knows that maybe it would be better for her to step out, considering how young she is. She hasn’t really had a chance to build a life for herself, and she could now, could find something other than fighting. Only Steve knows it’ll never happen. There is a determination in her similar to the one he sees in Nat, if not quite as refined, and it’s telling her she should try and make amends.

And if that’s what she needs to do, Steve would rather she is with them than anyone else or alone. Besides, he does like her, in a way he imagines he would have liked a little sister if he’d ever had one. He keeps the thought to himself, since she’s mourning her actual brother, and Steve can’t, and doesn’t even want to, take Pietro’s place. All he can do is be himself and see what builds between them.

It takes a while for her to come out of her shell, long hours of training and just living in close circles at the compound. Bit by bit she opens up, starts talking about other things besides the work and training. In return Steve finds he opens up to her in a different way from Nat and Sam. She understands how it feels having something and then losing everything, viscerally and very much the same as Steve. They often end up sitting in the gym after a hand to hand session and just talking. 

She starts finding hobbies, starts to smile and laugh, and Steve thinks that they’re on a way to a good thing.

If he were a pessimist he would have been able to guess it wasn’t going to last.

***

Steve is aching, physically and yet more mentally when he has fought his way through the Raft and its defenses. He’s still not fully recovered from the fight with Tony, but his injuries hurt less than knowing that there might now be a permanent divide among the Avengers, that for all that they fought to preserve at least something, they all ultimately lost, and he suspects he doesn’t yet know how much.

He gets another indication of the losses right there. He’d been livid to know that the UN had a secret prison for enhanced people, one where they could just be thrown in without any kind of due process. It’s born out of fear, and Steve knows it’s a slippery slope. If the enhanced human beings aren’t entitled to basic human rights, what groups will next be denied? It’s a grim prospect for the world, and he means to fight it, even if he doesn’t yet know how.

It’s hard to stamp down the fury when he sees Wanda, bound and collared, eyes dull. Still, his anger right then isn’t productive, he’ll have to save it. Right now she needs support. Steve gently removes the collar and the bindings, and it’s a new wave of heartbreak when her legs don’t carry her at first, after she’s spent days near immobile.

In the end Steve carries her out, with her arms clutched around his neck hard enough to hurt, and he prays she’ll find her way back.

***

It feels almost like starting over again, in more than one way. They’re safe in Wakanda, but other than that, there aren’t too many solid surfaces for them. Steve again spends a lot of time with Wanda, and it’s much the same as right after Ultron and the loss of Pietro, when she didn’t smile, didn’t talk except for necessities.

It’s different too; there’s hesitation in her when it comes to her powers. She already struggled with them, with whether she should use them at all, before imprisonment, and what happened didn’t help her with that. Steve also knows it’s tricky for her to be in Wakanda. Even if T’Challa has guaranteed their safety, she’s still seen as responsible for the death of Wakandans in Nigeria, and it hangs on her.

Steve considers whether they should leave. If it becomes the better option, he’ll go with her, even if the idea of leaving Bucky pains him. Still, he knows Bucky would understand that right now she needs Steve more than Bucky does. 

In the end, they stay. One morning Wanda comes from her room, and there’s a sparkle in her eyes again, the determination Steve remembers except sharper. She reiterates the sentiment that she needs to get off her ass, and Steve laughs, because the other option would be to cry, and he feels like there are too many things one might cry about in the world these days, so he’s going to laugh when ever he can. She smiles too, and the morning is bright for reasons besides the African sun.

They find a new balance again, strengthened by their usual training routine. They interact with Wakandans too, with the Dora Milaje and the royal household. Their trust is hard won, but it is worth fighting for.

Wanda sometimes comes with Steve to sit with Bucky, and Steve finds himself telling her stories from their childhood, and other stories from the war, the way he usually hasn’t been comfortable telling to anyone. In return, she tells him about her family and how they lived before the bomb, and she tells him how they chose to survive with Pietro, and later how they decided that there were bigger things than just survival.

The trust between them is solid and strong, and Steve knows it will last, whatever the world throws at them.

 

* * *

 

**And once more…**

Sarah Rogers used to talk to Steve about finding the people that matter, and making the most of the time spent with them, because you’d never know when time was up. Of course she believed that you’d be able to find them again on the other side, but it would be different then.

She never told Steve that you could lose someone and then find them again on this Earth. She probably hadn’t known it would be possible, because she’d only suffered losses. And so, it comes as an impossibility when Steve stands on the middle of the street, adrenaline high with fight, and it’s Bucky in front of him. 

Later the impossibility becomes a heartbreaking example of all the horror people cause to their fellows, and Steve’s world lurches again, all the solid surfaces suddenly tilting and slippery. Another thing his mother couldn’t prepare him for, the pain that comes with finding someone dear again.

It takes years of not knowing, doubt and despair, pain and anguish, finding and losing, lit up with only the tiniest flame of hope, but they come together again, finally. There is a day, after all the difficult days, when they’re not running, when Bucky’s head is all his own again, and they can rest for a while. Steve knows it won’t last forever, he knows there will be new crises again, but he hopes that when it happens, they’ll be in a more solid place.

***

They move together into a house in Flatbush, and it’s familiar and isn’t. The city is the same and different, but they never used to live in a house, just the tiny apartment they could afford. They have their own rooms now, and three stories of space, instead of bumping elbows every time they turn around. 

The space is different, and they are different. Steve knows he’s less angry, or maybe it’s that the anger doesn’t blow up like it used to anymore, but simmers under. He finds it harder to draw, to create new things after so many years of not drawing because all his pencils seemed to call forth were memories he didn’t want to relive. He tries though, and maybe it is getting easier now.

Bucky is more quiet, still partially the soldier that he will never be able to fully shed, taking in everything about his surroundings, having a hard time to trust anyone. He’s still capable as he always used to be, but it’s sharper now. Almost everything is.

There are edges in them, places where the softer matter has been sanded away by years and wars and fighting, by sorrow and frustration. There are edges, but they still fit together, not like they used to, but in a way that suits them now. And maybe it’s horrible to think so, considering all they’ve been through, but part of Steve wouldn’t go back even if he could, because there is a new kind of possibility in them now, and he doesn’t know if they’d get here any other way.

He ends up confessing it to Bucky late one night, when they’ve been sitting on the couch leaning on each other, drinking vodka which does nothing at all for Steve and gives a slight buzz for Bucky, but they still drink it. Bucky looks at him for solid ten seconds, and then he starts laughing, the new laugh that’s different from what it used to be but is perfect for this new Bucky that fits with the man Steve is now.

“That’s awful,” Bucky gasps, still laughing, “You’re right but it’s still awful.”

“I know,” Steve says, laughing too, because there’s nothing else for it.

***

They fit together, and it’s different from before. It happens gradually, the new want blooming in Steve’s chest, slowly and surely, almost without him noticing until it’s there and solid. And because he’s decided to take heed of his mother’s advice and not waste time, even though it already is years too late probably, there comes a day when he reaches for Bucky, and it’s not the friendly kind of touch they’ve been relearning, but something new altogether.

Steve reaches, and it feels like he’s standing on the edge and letting himself fall, except it’s not the kind of a fall that kills you. There is no hard landing, because Bucky comes easily to Steve; his hands, flesh and metal, at first hesitant and then urgent on Steve’s body. It’s the best kind of rush when their lips meet and they know they’ve finally found their way home.

Afterward they lay together in a nest of sheets, and it’s like another lock has opened, and they can talk more freely, even about things they used to hide from each other before the war. Things that back then felt so large but are almost insignificant now in comparison to what they have survived. Hence Steve manages to tell Bucky about the fear he used to carry in his heart that Bucky would leave, and in return Bucky confesses he always felt like he was struggling to stand in the light of Steve.

It’s something that throws Steve more than anything, because looking back, Bucky was never nothing else than the best man Steve knew. Still, it’s clear it’s hard for Bucky to believe when Steve says it. Steve resolves to make it his mission to prove it to Bucky, not in words but in action, and starting it with resolving to never fear, never again doubt what they have between them.

***

It’s not easy, even after, and even if they know each other more thoroughly than most people know anyone, there are still things to learn about each other. The easiest part is learning all the new ways to touch, all the ways they knew about but that didn’t belong into their lives until now that they do. There are a thousand ways to kiss, another thousand to caress, and they learn them all. There are thousands of roads that lead to bliss.

It’s harder to learn to sleep together, staying all night next to each other. They used to, sometimes in the winters before the war when the chill pushed into their little rooms. Back then it was a practicality, and it was easy, but now they’ve spent too long sleeping alone, or not sleeping at all. They don’t sleep that well just by themselves either, and together it feels that the problems compound. There are nights, a lot of them really, when they end up in separate beds, or in no beds at all, sleeping or not, but they keep trying, and it too does get easier in time.

There are days when the past looms large over both of them, days when it’s a struggle to get through, but even then Steve is grateful that they’re together, because it’s better. Bucky never says anything, but Steve knows he agrees.

There are days that are perfect, filled with sun and laughter and each other. It’s still the easiest thing in the world to love Bucky. Steve never stopped, even when he thought Bucky was gone, and now that they have another chance it’s as strong as ever.

It’s easy, and it’s difficult, same as their lives always have been, but maybe the bit that matters, the core of their relationship, is simpler than it ever has been. There is no uncertainty, no doubts anymore about what they mean to each other. They know they have each other, from now to eternity, and it’ll take them through to wherever they need to go, as it already has taken them through everything from the sunny streets of their childhood into the colorful park during a fall here in the future, where kissing under the blue sky isn’t dangerous at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](http://stellahibernis.tumblr.com/), come say hello if you feel like it.


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